Painted smiles
by Arianna Scribbler
Summary: "Ginny learned to lie when she was eleven and not fine at all, and again when she was twelve, and then thirteen, and every day since." Character study.


I am... not happy with this. But it's the kind of not happy about it that demands that the whole project be scrapped and I don't want to do that. So I finished it instead and I'm sticking it up here because there are bits and pieces that I'm kind of pleased with, even if I don't like the overall way it turned out.

Once again thanks to Elo who read it and assured me that it was okay that it doesn't go anywhere. Elo is far more tolerant of my writing rambles and need for constant validation than I deserve.

Harry Potter and all associated characters and scenarios belong to JK Rowling, who is not me. The only profit being made from this is the enjoyment I derived from writing it, and there wasn't a whole lot of that either.

* * *

She doesn't have a side. She fights for the Order and the DA because it's convenient, because it's expected of her, because she knows Tom Marvolo Riddle, styled Lord Voldemort, would wreak havoc on everything were he allowed to reign again. She does not, as she says she does, fight for them because she believes in their ideals or because she finds them morally superior. She learned early that the fighters stinking of phoenix fire were quick to blame a child for her mistakes instead of her tormentor, that they willingly ignored what they could not fix, that the only way to keep from being discarded was to pick yourself up and pretend to be fine. But Ginny is a Gryffindor and Ginny is a Weasley, so pick herself up she did, shoving anything she could into the cracks deep inside her so that she could appear whole on the outside.

(She envies Harry his scar. Not, like Ron, for the fame it brings, but because it means people never forget his history. Hers are invisible and thus hers to bear alone.)

When she was thirteen she tracked down Parvati Patil and, with a combination of flattery and bribery, convinced the older girl to teach her the secrets of makeup. She does not think about where she learned those tactics, but rather congratulates herself on a job well done each time she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror or the breastplate of a suit of armor, polished to a nearly impossible sheen by Filtch every morning. Makeup hides a multitude of flaws, from the acne that dots her skin as she creeps into adolescence proper to the puffiness around her eyes that comes after a sleepless night. There are many of those; she got the location of the kitchens out of Fred and George early in her second year and pleaded with the House Elves until they agreed to serve her proper tea in the mornings.

By fourteen Ginny had learned to take advantage of the admiring looks the boys (and several girls) sent her way. She dated freely, throwing herself into the game of teenage romance with reckless abandon. She had her first kiss in October, gave her first hand job before Easter, lost her virginity shortly after her fifteenth birthday. She does not regret any of those things. (She carefully does not wonder why it's so important that her body be hers to command.) Her parents would lock her into a chastity belt if they knew, and her brothers would castrate all her lovers, but Ginny learned to lie when she was eleven and not fine at all, and again when she was twelve, and then thirteen, and every day since. Her every word is a lie some days; concealing her tentative explorations with Michael Corner in the north tower or the casual way she and Dean Thomas violated each others' personal space when they were alone is nothing compared to stuffing the cracks inside of her when she feels about to break in half.

At sixteen she helps Neville run the DA, devoting all her energy to protecting the younger kids who flock to the Room of Requirement for sanctuary. She's not good at comforting people, so she teaches them to defend themselves and leaves Neville to deal with their tears and their nightmares. (She tries not to be jealous that they have that kind of support. She fails.) While in class she studies the Carrows closely, analyzing their words and their actions in a way she pretends she picked up through years of experience flirting. She learns that Alecto is smarter and Amycus meaner, learns that Amycus can be bribed with several bottles of White Rat Whiskey, provided that the right person offers, and that Alecto has a taste for blood pops that only increase rumors she's actually a hag. Ginny learns that tears and screaming only makes them more eager to continue the torture, but that staying quiet makes it last longer. Fred and George let slip more than enough over the years for Ginny to have a rough idea of where all the secret passages are, but she prowls the castle at nights anyway, opening doors she remembers being told to leave alone and feeling uncomfortably like Snape. During the day she reassures the other DA members that everyone's going to get through this and doesn't even pretend to actually believe it. Harry's the Chosen Hero, and she has full faith that he'll somehow manage to scrape a win in the end, but his luck doesn't extend to those around him.

Sometimes when she dreams she remembers dark hair and the seductive sound of the serpent's tongue. Ginny tells herself that she misses Harry and spends more time exploring the grounds to avoid going to sleep.

She pretends to take notes in her classes, but her scraps of parchment are filled with ways to strike back against Snape and the Carrows. Invisible ink becomes a staple in her life. Her marks drop as a result – brainstorming ways to slip Snape a bit of puking pastille might be satisfying but it doesn't help when revising or writing essays – but no one cares about marks anymore. She abstains from plotting in Snape's class out of some lingering sense of self preservation, but she doesn't take notes either. No one who's treated her as badly as he has deserves her attention or respect. She's long since learned to chalk the half-condescending pride she feels when she defies authority up to her own neuroses.

She sees Parvati looking at her speculatively sometimes, catches glimpses of the older girl trying to figure her out. Ginny doesn't deign to give Parvati any ammunition; acknowledging her would just cement the idea that there's something to find. (Ginny knows she can lie well enough to put Parvati off the scent and sometimes she wonders why she doesn't do it. The mocking voice in the back of her mind suggests that she wants to be called on her hypocrisy; she tunes it out with Neville's calls for solidarity and trust within the DA and ignores the way the internal taunts turn to harsh laughter.)

It's her idea to steal the sword of Gryffindor. Hannah Abbot, of all people, recognizes it for what it is after being dragged up to see Snape for refusing to practice the bone-crushing curse on a Hufflepuff second-year. Neville's wary of breaking into the Headmaster's office, but Luna takes Ginny's side and together they wear him down. They plan the heist carefully, drawing on all Ginny's second-hand sneakiness and Luna's tendency to approach problems upside down and sometimes backwards. Neville stays mostly quiet during planning, scribbling notes and trying to hide his ambivalence. He doesn't succeed. Nor, after it's all gone horribly wrong, does he say anything even close to 'I told you so.' Ginny wonders how the hell Neville didn't get sorted into Hufflepuff and can't tell whether or not she means it as an insult.

Snape dumps the three of them into the forbidden forest as a punishment. Ginny remembers the way Filtch cackled when Snape gave him permission to bring the single-tailed whip back into common use and knows that, for whatever reason, he's let them off easy. (By the time they finally stumble back into the school, bleeding and filthy, with a completely reasonable newfound terror of ivy tendrils, Ginny suspects that the whip would have been a better deal.)

Luna vanishes over the Christmas holidays. The official rumor is that it has to do with the Quibbler, but Ginny knows that it's about the sword too. She tries not to feel too guilty and is almost disgusted by how easy that is to accomplish. She and Neville struggle to keep the DA going strong, both surprised to realize how much they'd come to depend on the blonde for grounding. Ginny locks her worry for her friend away deep inside of her the same way she does her nightmares; emotions won't win the war for any of them. (The false platitudes given by the adults of the Order sting more than blunt inaction ever would. Ginny fixes a reassured look on her face and wonder if it's possible to truly hate one's parents.) Neville tells her, a little wistfully, that he misses being young and carefree; she tells him sharply that it must have been nice to be innocent once upon a time and refuses to feel bad about the suddenly guilty look on his face.

The second week of spring term she finds herself sitting in a corner of the Gryffindor common room, blank parchment in front of her, remembering the freedom of paper and ink. She doesn't write anything that day, but her own cowardice disgusts her and she sneaks out of bed the next night and almost defiantly starts writing her thoughts down in invisible ink. The parchment doesn't write back. Ginny burns it the next day and doesn't repeat the experiment.

She keeps track of Harry as well as she can, sifting through the propaganda in the Daily Prophet to find hints of the truth. The Quibbler has stopped running entirely, and Witch Weekly is almost aggressively filling its pages with nothing but beauty tips, so the only thing she has left is the Ministry-run newspaper. The articles make her sick; the day after she reads a gloating piece about the number of muggle-borns so far successfully convicted of stealing their magic she skips all her classes to brew a NEWT-level potion and goes almost one hundred galleons into debt to Padma to buy the best bottle of White Rat she can find. The detentions she gets for cutting class are worth it when Amycus Carrow's agonized screams break the hospital wing's silencing charms. Parvati stops looking her in the eye, and even Neville seems hesitant. Dennis Creevey congratulates her on a job well done. Ginny doesn't think of a young man who liked to make his classmates cry. (Neville will call her on it, eventually. Ginny will remind him of the lives lost and ruined, will quote statistics at him, will state flatly that she won't be rendered helpless in the face of injustice. She won't convince him, but he'll leave her alone. She will claim that the loneliness she feels is because she misses Harry and she will almost not be lying. She will not think about someone with perfect penmanship whispering that he is her only friend.)

More students move permanently into the Room of Requirement. Aberforth Dumbledore increases the amount of food he sends them. She asks him one day about the girl in the painting connecting the tavern to the Room of Requirement; he tells her that someone he knows made a terrible mistake a long time ago and spent his life running from the consequences. She wonders whether he's talking about his brother or about himself. It seems inappropriate to ask.

Spring crawls on. Ginny too moves into the Room permanently and spends her time practicing increasingly obscure defensive magic. She does not lie to the first years when they ask her what she's preparing for; children are more able to face the uncomfortable truths of the world than most adults she knows. She teaches them their basics and smiles with genuine pride when they succeed in repelling her attacks. When Neville isn't watching she shows anyone who asks how to open booby-trapped doors and how to cast the confundus charm and how to sneak into the restricted section and tell at a glance which books contain offensive magic. She teaches them to resist the imperius curse using Harry's description of the process as a model and gives them tips on how to deal with the pain of the cruciatus. Neville catches on eventually and the two of them have a screaming row about turning children into weapons. She points out that it's better to be armed than dead and distantly wonders when Dennis Creevey became her biggest ally. (She ignores the thought that Harry would hate what she's doing and focuses on the voice in her mind pushing her to use her resources wisely.)

She doesn't go home for Easter holidays.

By the time Harry finally stumbles into the Room of Requirement Ginny's too busy being relieved that someone else is finally in charge that she barely notices how hollow his eyes have become. She dispatches the others to look for Harry's mysterious object and looks to him for further instruction, ignoring the way her heartbeat speeds up when his eyes meet hers. Later there will be time for reunions, after the battle is won and the enemy vanquished. Later there will be time for kisses and crying and heartfelt confessions. (Ginny doesn't bother to ignore the voice asking just how much she intends to confess. It's right and she'll deal with that later.)

In the end Harry's has died and come back and Fred has died and stayed dead, the Dark has been defeated (beaten back, really) and the forces of Good have proclaimed victory, and Ginny has witnessed genuine atrocities and seen more acts of selflessness on both sides than most people have in a lifetime. She stands in the ruined remains of the Great Hall, watching as her family mourns and her boyfriend stands awkwardly off to one side with his friends. Neville and Luna are making the rounds, while Parvati and Padma are hovering worriedly over Lavender's still twitching body. Ginny herself feels numb, almost criminally so. She has seen people die, has probably caused people to die, and she feels nothing. She has spent years mastering the art of falsifying emotions, but now she cannot dredge up genuine ones to fit any situation, much less the one at hand. Were she to consider it, she would find that it has been a long time indeed since she felt anything truly genuine. In the back of her mind, the teenage Dark Lord who has never quite left starts to laugh.


End file.
